Love Alone Will Ever Stay

Our readings this week foretell a good deal of destruction. “Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low.” And, “The heavens will pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be found out.” These cataclysms signal the coming of the Lord, ushering in an era where “justice and peace shall kiss,” so presumably this is an event we are looking forward to. But are we really looking forward to this second coming, the end of everything we know? How many of us look forward to moving into a new house?

We might like the idea of living in the Biltmore, but most of us would probably do whatever we could to avoid the headache of moving. Even when we know exactly when moving day is coming a month in advance, we’re up until 3am the night before packing before the movers show up first thing in the morning. How much of this is simply wanting to stay where we are, remain comfortable, attached to the familiar?

Last weekend we sang Marty Haugen’s beautiful song, With Open Hands. The second verse begins, “All we know now will pass away, and love alone will ever stay.” In the second reading, Peter writes in terms of waiting patiently for the Lord by “conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion.” While our stuff will go away, it seems like what we do matters, our choices in life endure.

The bonds of love are eternal, relationships we form are eternal. In the end, our relationship with God and our relationships with one another are all the matters, everything else is dust that will be vaporized. And we need to reconcile any issues in our relationships before we can move on. So this Advent, perhaps the greatest call is to reset our priorities, and intentionally invest time and energy into our relationship with our God, and with the people in our lives.